A typical consumer purchases gifts for others in connection with a wide variety of events, such as weddings, baby showers, birthdays, or the like. In the case of a wedding, couples typically create a registry of desired gifts at one or more stores prior to their wedding in order to give purchasers an idea of what items would make good wedding presents. However, as the number of gift purchasers for a given occasion grows, the chances of duplicating gift purchases increases substantially because the registry may not reflect gifts already purchased by other customers. Moreover, a purchasing customer typically has to travel to that particular store to retrieve the registry and make the purchase, which can be inconvenient and is sometimes impractical, depending on where the customer lives.
In department stores, supermarkets, and other retail establishments, products for sale are typically labeled with a uniquely identifying bar code. These products can be scanned at a checkout station to initiate an automatic retrieval of price from an in-store processor and computer database. Typically, the only information provided to the customer is the price of the product at the checkout station. Some attempts have been made to provide the customer with a portable scanner which interacts with the customer to provide more information about the product while the customer is making purchasing decisions throughout the store rather than at the checkout station.
For example, some portable devices provide individual shoppers with microprocessor units that can scan the bar codes, display updated product prices and other information derived from the in-store database, and allow manipulation of information such as keeping a list of items purchased, the total cost, sales tax, etc. However, these types of units require that the product information be updated after the unit is returned to a staging area where the unit's power is recharged. Thus, there remains a lag time which can cause discrepancies between the product information in the portable unit and at a checkout station, even though both locations derive the information from the same in-store database. Therefore, it remains desirable to provide a product information system that provides "real-time" updated information from a host database. In addition, it is desirable to provide the customer with information reflecting input by third parties, such as the registrant or other customers, whether the information came from the same store or other stores.
Other attempts have been made to provide portable scanners containing a display device and a reading device for taking stock of the number and type of available goods for inventory purposes. Such systems have also been utilized with wireless communication systems between the reading device and the in-store data processing unit. For example, one such system incorporates a compact hand unit comprising a transmitter for wireless communication of the code detected to a receiver in an in-store data processing unit. Typically, transmission is effected by radio waves, especially in the VHF range.
Nevertheless, it remains desirable to provide a handheld wireless system in connection with a local area network adapted to interface with an in-store processor, a registry retrieval device configured to retrieve updated registry data from a host computer in response to a request from a purchasing customer, and a point of sale data input device for identifying desired items which have been purchased.